Entities with substantial printing demands often use a production printer such as a continuous-forms printer that prints on a web of print media at high-speed. A production printer typically includes a print controller that controls the overall operation of the printing system, and a print engine that physically marks the web. The print engine has one or more printheads each with rows of small nozzles that discharge ink as controlled by the printhead controller.
While printing, the web is quickly passed underneath the nozzles, which discharge ink at intervals to form pixels on the web. The web may shift laterally with respect to its direction of travel due to a variety of factors such as the physical properties of the web, amount of ink applied to the web, environmental conditions within the printer, positioning of rollers, etc. When these lateral shifts occur during printing, the printed output for a print job may also be shifted. Even relatively small lateral shifts may result in reduced print quality.
When multiple printheads are used by a printer to form a mixed color pixel, a small fluctuation in web position can cause an upstream printhead to mark the correct physical location, while a downstream printhead marks the wrong physical location. Thus, to maintain color-to-color registration between printheads, a positioning system may quickly adjust the lateral position of the downstream printhead. However, if the printhead is adjusted too quickly (e.g., too much distance in a time period), nozzles within the printhead may mark the wrong physical location with respect to other nozzles in the printhead, resulting in misalignment in the color plane and reduced print quality.